French Far Right National Front 'Routed' in Key Vote

I saw this on BBC News and didn’t see it mentioned here.

Exit polls from the second round of elections indicated that France's far-right National Front (FN) has failed to win a single region.

Early results suggest the party was beaten into third place, despite leading in six of 13 regions in the first round of votes a week ago.

The polls predict Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right Republicans will win most seats ahead of the ruling Socialists.

When the center right party and FN each secured more than 40% of the votes in the first round of elections on December 6, the Socialist joined those on the center right to defeat the far right.

According to one poll, the Republicans have secured about 40% of the nationwide vote, followed by the Socialists with 30% and the FN with 28%. Official results are expected early on Monday.

This was the first voting test since the attacks in Paris last month, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, and which resulted in the deaths of 130 people.  FN hoped that people’s fears following those attacks would result in a victory for their far right agenda.  The first round of voting showed that they might be correct, but these elections proved decisive—for now at least.

Xavier Bertrand, who is leading in Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, said the French had given "a lesson of rallying together, courage. Here we stopped the progression of the National Front."

But Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls was less upbeat. He warned the "danger posed by the far right has not gone away, far from it."